Assault on the Royal Capital (3)
01.
"It's changed a lot…."
I hadn't noticed outside in the dark, but once we stepped into the second fortress, the difference was unmistakable. The royal capital had swollen far beyond anything I remembered, and its scenery had grown refined almost past recognition.
Daily life itself didn't seem radically different, yet the city's elegant new face was more than enough to lift the corners of every passerby's mouth. Magic-stone lamps glowed like streetlights. A vast fountain plaza cradled angelic statues. Well-paved roads lined with evergreens dressed the streets. On weekends, families would throng out for outings, lovers would confess their feelings, and the bright laughter of children would fill the air.
Right now, of course, it was filled only with undead.
"R-Run awaaaaay!!"
"Undead! Skeletons! Everyone, evacuate!!"
"To the first wall! Fall back to the first wall!!"
"Kyaaaaaaah!!"
"…."
Screams erupted from every direction. The hundred-thousand-strong skeleton legion I had summoned poured into the city like a tidal wave, and the citizens fled in utter panic.
"H-Hold them baaack!"
"Don't let them through—graaah!!"
City guards tried desperately to hold the alleys and slow the skeletal advance, but they were swept aside without lasting even a full minute. Pillars of fire erupted across the city; blood sprayed and painted the night sky red. My immortal legion, having already taken the third fortress, now seized the second as well, steadily tightening the noose around the capital's throat.
"S-Stop right there! Vampire!"
"Hm?"
Just short of the first wall, someone barred our path. Not a fresh wave of reinforcements, but a single woman—blood-soaked, body a wreck—standing alone against us.
Golden hair. Eyes burning with iron resolve. A longsword gripped with the last of her strength.
…It was the female knight who had led the soldiers at the third fortress: Maiden Alice.
"…You still want to fight?"
I asked the woman who looked barely able to stay on her feet. She only glared at me in silence, eyes sharp as blades.
I studied her with mild interest—neither charging nor fleeing, simply staring me down. Then, abruptly, she flung her sword aside into a corner.
"I-I'm sorry…."
She dropped to her knees and slammed her forehead to the ground before me.
"We were wrong to block your path without knowing anything. Forgive us for interfering with whatever business you have."
"…."
The knight—so ill-suited to the honorable title of "knight"—pressed her head to my feet and begged for their sins.
"I-If you tell us what you need, we will help however we can. I am also a companion of the Hero, so I will petition him as well and ensure he cooperates with your cause."
"…."
"I-If you wish it, I will even offer my own life."
"…."
"S-So please… please stop this slaughter. Spare my subordinates… spare the people…."
Watching a knight—those creatures who were always so arrogant, so contemptuous of others—tremble and grind her forehead into the dirt left me with a strange feeling. She had realized she was no match for me, and under the conviction that she had to protect her people and her subordinates, she had cast aside every last shred of pride.
…Even staking her own life to beg me to halt the invasion. I looked down at her coldly all the same.
"Your life?"
"Y-Yes. Please… take my neck alone and spare my subordinates…."
"…And who exactly are you?"
"…Eh?"
At my question the knight's expression froze. She peeked up from her bowed head and spoke in a rush.
"W-Well, I am the enemy commander, am I not?! Appointed by the Minister, I am currently the supreme commander of the capital's forces…!"
"So what."
"Eh…?"
"I don't see enough value in your life to spare every other soldier for it."
True enough, films and old histories sometimes showed mercy granted at an enemy general's final request. Right now, I felt no such need. Supreme commander or enemy general—unless it was the Lilianel I was hunting, every other life in this capital felt like so much scrap paper.
Besides, it was far too late to withdraw cleanly.
"…Tina?"
"Yes, Master."
I called to Tina, who had been following behind me. She drew her greatsword and stepped forward. At the sight, the knight's face crumpled; she began slamming her head against the ground again and again.
"N-No, please, I beg you—withdraw your forces!"
"Sorry. It's a little late to take it back now."
Unlike the others who had thrashed mindlessly to the end, this knight who had cast everything aside to save her subordinates was worthy of some respect.
But to pull every skeleton back on her word alone and suddenly turn everything peaceful… the thousand years I had spent sealed were far too bitter and unjust for that.
"Feel wronged? Then go complain to your ancestors."
"M-My ancestors…?"
"Yeah. The ones from a thousand years ago. And that bitch of a Prime Minister of yours—Lilianel."
The humans who had raised torches and cried for my subjugation. The Hero and his companions who had murdered my friend, pinned a filthy crime on me, and mocked me while I hung in chains.
Even doing this much, the rage never fully left me. All of it had lodged in my chest like trauma, like PTSD, refusing to be forgotten.
"…Tina."
"N-No! Vampire! Please, have pity on the huma—ghhk!!"
"…."
Even clinging to my leg and pleading, the knight's head finally fell to Tina's greatsword. Tears rolled from the severed head as it tumbled across the ground.
I only watched her end with cold eyes.
"…Alfred. Collect the head."
"Understood, my lady."
I ordered Alfred to take the severed head. She had claimed with her own mouth to be the enemy commander and a companion of the Hero; it would prove useful later when I needed to provoke him.
"Haa…."
I let out a breath.
Someone watching might call me cruel, but I was no hero. I was no champion of justice, no absolute good.
There was no reason I had to move according to their wishes or take their words at face value.
I had stood on their side once already. They were the ones who had kicked that aside.
Now I was simply letting them reap what they had sown.
"…Let's go."
I steeled my heart once more and advanced toward the first fortress—toward the royal palace where Lilianel would be.
02.
As we approached the first wall, the skeleton soldiers who had already reached it parted to either side, opening a path. They looked for all the world like troops receiving a king.
"That is…."
And what seized my gaze upon arriving at the first wall was something else entirely: an enormous white flag hanging brazenly across the battlements.
"Pfft."
At that symbol of unconditional surrender, I burst out laughing. These people who never understood anything until they had been hit first were truly beyond belief.
Couldn't they have just come out like this the moment they heard Elmaile had fallen? Did they think they were different—that with the well-trained soldiers of the capital under their command, they could actually beat me?
I snorted at the enemy's incompetence, their foolishness, their frantic, belated response.
Well, from Lilianel's perspective—trembling inside the castle with her life on the line—they would have had to resist with everything they had. I couldn't say I failed to understand their desperate struggle.
"…."
Creeeak.
…And a moment later, the gates opened.
Through the shadowed gap of the gate, a woman with plum-colored hair in a black dress stepped forward at the head of a group who looked like nobles. Without hesitation they knelt before me and bowed their heads. The plum-haired woman who seemed to lead them called out.
"W-We are the Ten Council, who oversee the internal affairs of the Abilia Kingdom. We surrender to the noble Progenitor Vampire."
"…."
Just like the white flag, they declared their intent to surrender. Instead of answering, I studied them carefully.
The king was a puppet anyway; if they ran internal affairs, they were the real power in this country. A "Ten Council" should mean ten people, yet only nine nobles stood before me. And the kingdom's supreme power—the Prime Minister, Lilianel Greenfield—was nowhere to be seen.
Confirming the absence of that green-haired elf, a vein stood out on my forehead.
What, had she run?
No—I had received no report of anyone escaping the first fortress through the skeleton soldiers packing the second. So were they hiding her?
Protecting her because she was the Prime Minister, because capture by me meant certain death?
…Rage suddenly boiled up from my gut.
"I-I am the kingdom's Minister, Mijael. We will cease all hostile acts and offer every form of support our kingdom can provide, so please… quell your wrath…."
"…Wrath?"
At her words I let out a short, dry laugh.
…If you cared about my mood, you should have dragged that damned Prime Minister of yours out here and made her kneel too.
"Go in."
Knowing Lilianel was missing, I twisted my face and pointed through the wide-open gate.
"Kieeeeeeeek!!"
"Kyaaaaaaaah!!"
At once the skeleton soldiers crashed into the first fortress like another wave. Before long, the hideous screams of people being carved apart by their weapons reached us.
"W-We surrendered—w-why…."
When the mercy they had hoped to buy with surrender was brushed aside in an instant, the faces of the Ten Council nobles went deathly pale. I approached the woman who seemed to lead them—the one who had named herself Mijael—and seized her by the collar.
"Kya—kyaaah!!"
Mijael trembled like an aspen leaf, terror-stricken. Eyes blazing with fury, I demanded:
"Shut up. Where is Lilianel."
"L-Lilianel? You mean the Prime Minister?"
"Yes. Talk. Fast. Before I kill every last one of you."
"Ghhk…!!"
I tightened my grip on her collar.
…Lilianel Greenfield.
I had come all the way to this capital to meet the woman who had joined the first Hero Varius in his sordid affair, murdered my friend Sophie, and stabbed me in the back. If she wasn't here, every effort had been for nothing.
At my gritted question, the woman called Mijael pointed a shaking hand toward the vast palace within the first fortress.
"I-If it's the Prime Minister… s-she's unwell, so she's inside the palace…."
"…."
"Ghhk!"
Hearing Lilianel's location, I released Mijael's collar as if flinging her to the ground.
Fine. As long as she was inside the castle, it didn't matter. Surrounded on all sides by skeleton soldiers, true escape was now impossible.
I spoke coldly to the beggar-like nobles who had come out to surrender.
"Guide me. Now. Unless you all want to die."
03.
"H-Here is the Prime Minister's chamber. She has been unwell and has refused even our visits…."
"…."
The nobles who ran the kingdom's internal affairs led me all the way to Lilianel's room. It lay on the second floor of the palace, at the end of a long corridor thick with the cloying scent of night-blooming flowers.
A smell strong enough to smother the fragrance of the potted plants placed throughout. That alone told me how thoroughly debauched a life Lilianel had been living.
"Ha."
One of us had spent a thousand years sealed in tears of blood, while the other had been rolling her hips atop men and living like garbage. Varius, wherever he was in the heavens, would have beaten the ground in frustration.
"…If she's not here, you all die."
"Y-Yes, understood…."
After delivering that sharp warning to the nobles, I set my hand on Lilianel's door. Now that the moment of meeting her face-to-face had arrived, I found myself wondering what to do—what method of punishment would make her suffer most.
But it didn't matter.
One thing was certain: she would not die cleanly.
"…."
…I opened the door and stepped inside.
At the same time, a surprisingly tidy room greeted me—along with a stale reek of sweat and night flowers that did not match the neatness at all. Not a single lantern was lit; the chamber was dark as a shadow. Only moonlight filtering through the curtains illuminated the elf's room.
"…."
I turned my head, searching for Lilianel.
Given her arrogant nature, I had expected her to be sitting brazenly in her seat. Whether a thousand years had changed her personality or not, that was not the case.
"…Ah."
After scanning the room, I found it: in the far corner, in the narrow gap between the bed and the wall, a pair of sharply pointed ears.
I smiled and nodded toward Alfred.
"Alfred?"
"Understood. …Telekinesis."
At my command, Alfred activated his psychokinetic magic and gently lifted the Lilianel hiding in the corner into the air. Caught in the powerful mana of my familiar, the green-haired elf was drawn out helplessly.
"Kyaaaaaah!!"
"…."
The elf came floating toward me with a loathsome scream. She thrashed, but breaking Alfred's restraint was far beyond her.
Green hair. Emerald eyes. A bewitching, sensual figure that captivated anyone who looked.
…It was unmistakably the Lilianel of my memories.
"…Been well?"
Lilianel, after a full thousand years.
The moment I had pictured and pictured again for a millennium.
The day I had awaited every single day, shedding tears of blood.
With a face steeped in madness, I took a step toward her.
"H-Hiiik…."
…Lilianel turned her head away as if terrified, avoiding my gaze.
"It's been a while. Didn't you miss me?"
A storm of emotions exploded in my chest. Not knowing which expression to wear among so many, my brain overloaded. Perhaps because of it, the corners of my mouth stretched wider and wider, as if they might tear.
"…Look me in the eye."
I seized the cheek of the Lilianel who kept dodging my gaze and forced her head around. I brought my blazing crimson eyes right up to her face.
"I-I'm so sorry…."
Lilianel mumbled, tears pouring like a waterfall.
…And as I held her cheek, I felt something wrong.
"What…."
The dissonance transmitted through my fingertips where they touched her cheek made my expression harden. I murmured blankly and let go of the hand that had been gripping Lilianel's face.
"Wh-What…."
I staggered back and muttered at Lilianel—no, at the someone who was playing Lilianel.
"Who… who are you…."
…In this world based on the Tower of Avalon, every person possessed mana, regardless of quantity or quality.
And because each person's mana was unique, the people of this world used it like fingerprints in reality to verify individual identity.
Unlike faces that could be forged or fingerprints that could be erased, mana was carried in the blood and could never be falsified. Even after a transfusion it would eventually be overwritten by one's own mana again, so identification papers in this world were inscribed with each person's mana.
And those who could freely manipulate mana—S-rank adventurers and archmages and the like—could sense others' mana even in daily life.
…That common knowledge naturally applied to me as well, the Necromancer Lord.
I too could discern the mana in the air or in other people, and through it I could tell whether mages were nearby, who someone truly was.
"Fuck… who the hell are you…."
…And the wavelength of mana I felt now was screaming that the person before me was not Lilianel, but someone else.
Her appearance was identical to the Lilianel in my memory. Her mana was so similar that a single misstep could have fooled me completely.
But the woman in front of me was not Lilianel.
The subtle murkiness that had always clung to Lilianel's mana was absent, and more than anything, her mana was far too vivid and healthy.
Far too fresh to belong to someone a thousand years old.
A slight difference—but that alone was more than enough to know this woman was not Lilianel.
"I-I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I only did as I was told…."
"…."
"S-She just asked me to stand in as a double for a while, I-I didn't mean any harm…."
On top of that, this fake Lilianel—a woman who had never been involved with me—blurted out her identity as if abandoning all hope. My eyes trembled at her words.
"W-What do you mean, a double…."
"T-The Prime Minister came to me suddenly three or four days ago and asked me to act as her double for just a month. She said I wouldn't have to do any of the work…."
"Ha… haha…."
"M-Master!"
A hollow laugh escaped me. A sudden headache crashed over me; I clutched my head and staggered. Tina hurried to support me.
"A double…."
She had set up a double?
From four days ago?
Four days ago was right around when my seal had just broken.
Had she somehow gotten wind of the information with uncanny timing and fled in advance?
Predicting that I would come looking like this?
"That fucking bitch…."
Yeah. No wonder everything had gone too smoothly.
No wonder that cunning bitch Lilianel had been caught so easily.
A madwoman who could kill even her own friend without batting an eye would never be caught this easily, this emptily.
…The thought that even a thousand years later I was still being toyed with by her only piled more fuel onto the rage I had been holding back.
"Ha."
…At the single fact that "Lilianel is not here," a black magic circle unfolded automatically at my feet, and a bleak, powerful mana—strong enough for even me, the caster, to feel—spread through the surroundings.
"Ghhk…."
The double of Lilianel, struck directly by that murky mana, collapsed unconscious on the spot. Twisting my face, I turned my head toward the nobles of the so-called "Ten Council" standing outside the room.
They immediately slammed their heads to the floor and groveled.
"W-We knew nothing!"
"I-It's true! We really didn't know! We only thought she was unwell!"
"When she left or where she went—we truly knew nothing!!"
"…."
Even though I had not yet spoken a word, they strained their throats making excuses. Radiating enough mana to crack the walls of the room, I spoke to them.
A cold, frigid voice rang through the chamber.
"You lot…."
"Y-Yes!"
The nobles trembled and pressed their heads even lower. I fixed them with a fierce glare, crimson eyes blazing. Black sparks leapt from my body under the runaway mana.
"Find out where Lilianel went. Within three hours. Right now."
"What?"
"Th-Three hours? I understand your feelings, but that's far too short—first, a detailed explan— …ghhk!!"
"…Shut up and find her."
I crushed the head of the noble who dared talk back. His brains and blood soaked the skin and clothes of the nobles beside him.
"Uwa—uwaaaaah, we'll find her!!"
At that horrific sight, their leader Mijael let out a scream and slammed her head into the floor. Grinding my teeth against the rising fury, I said:
"No matter what. You will find her."
Originally I had intended to end my retribution against the Abilia Kingdom by destroying Elmaile, the capital, and Lilianel.
But that thought had changed.
Elmaile and the capital alone no longer felt like enough.
"…Before I wipe your entire country off the map."